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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2009-03-12; Housing Commission; MinutesMinutes of: HOUSING COMMISSION Time of Meeting: 6:00 P.M. Date of Meeting: March 12, 2009 Place of Meeting: CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS CALL TO ORDER Chairperson Smith called the Meeting to order at 6:01 p.m. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Commissioner Kirk led with the Pledge of Allegiance. ROLL CALL Present: Commissioners: Craig Kirk Doris Ritchie Bobbie Smith Hope Wrisley Absent: Emelda Bradwell Staff Present: Housing and Redevelopment Director: Debbie Fountain Housing Program Manager: Bobbi Nunn APPROVAL OF MINUTES Minutes of February 12, 2009, were approved with two corrections on page 11, paragraph two, correct the spelling of "Sue Ladouceur." Also on page 11, paragraph five, line three, correct the spelling of "pejorative." VOTE: 4-0 AYES: Kirk, Ritchie, Smith and Wrisley NOES: None ABSTAIN: None ABSENT: Bradwell ITEM NOT ON AGENDA There were no items that were not on the agenda. NEW BUSINESS Debbie Fountain, Director of Housing and Redevelopment, presented the item on the agenda which is the Public Housing Agency Annual Plan and Bobbi Nunn, Housing Program Manager, will be making the presentation and answering questions tonight. Ms. Nunn said she will be presenting the Carlsbad Public Housing Agency Annual PHA Plan for Fiscal Year 2009. HUD has changed the template for this year so the format is different from prior years. Pursuant to the code of federal regulations 24 part 903, a public housing authority is required to submit a five-year and annual PHA Plan. The purpose of the five-year and the annual PHA Plan is to provide a basic guide to the PHA policies and rules, the public housing agency's operations, programs and services, and it also describes, mainly in the five-year plan, the Housing Agency's mission and strategies for assisting low and very low income household needs in the community. The Annual Plan must be adopted by the Housing and Redevelopment Commission. A copy with required certifications is submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is our funding source for the Section 8 Rental Assistance Program. The streamlined five-year plan for fiscal year 2005-2009 was adopted by the Housing and Redevelopment Commission in April of 2005. Next year our five-year plan will be due. The PHA Plan process does require public participation. There is a public HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 12, 2009 PAGE 2 of 5 review and comment period that will end on April 7, 2009, and there is a public hearing tentatively scheduled for the same date. Any oral communication will be recorded at the public hearing and any public comments that are received during the comment period and during the public hearing will be addressed in the final Public Housing Agency Plan that we submit to HUD. As a High Performing Housing Agency, the only PHA Plan requirement is to identify certain elements that have been revised from the previous year. The only areas that need to be addressed for this Annual PHA Plan are: • Financial Resources; • Re,nt Determination (payment standards); • Fiscal Year Audit; and • Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Since we have not received the funding allocation for federal fiscal year 2009, the Financial Resources are calendar year funds that were received in 2008. We received approximately $6.1 million to administer and operate the Rental Assistance Program. This allocation is for Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) and administrative costs. The change in Rent Determinations is due to a change in the Payment Standards; they increased October 1, 2008. The Payment Standards are based on the Fair Market Rent schedule that is determined by HUD and are effective on October 1st each year. A Fiscal Year Audit for year end June 30, 2008, was conducted which resulted in no audit findings. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), even though the Housing Agency implemented it last year, HUD has asked the PHA's to re-identify their effort on VAWA implementation. The efforts to implement the Violence Against Women Act Program is to educate applicants, participants and owners and to make them aware of the Act. Basically, our staff has been advised of the different resources that are available for children or adult victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault or stalking. If we have any clients that are experiencing that type of a situation and they fall under the Violence Against Women Act, then there are resources that we have to refer them to. Also, there is a brochure that is available in the Housing lobby that is titled: Violence Against Women Act - What Applicants, Tenants, Owners and Landlords Need to Know. Besides having the brochure in the lobby, it is also distributed during community outreach efforts and placed in briefing packets for new participants. The brochure does meet the federal notification requirements by HUD. General Program Information: Currently, the average number of households that we assist each month is 624. This includes 61 port-outs, which are units being administered by other housing agencies, mainly Oceanside, and reimbursed by our agency. Our average monthly payment is $746 per month. Recently there has been an increase in the average monthly assistance payment as a result of the economy. Because we are experiencing a large number of our clients whose work hours are getting reduced or unfortunately being laid off of their jobs, it is impacting the amount of money we are paying towards our housing assistance payments. Right now we are in the process of doing a waiting list purge. We still have 1,789 applicants on the waiting list; of those, only about 300 of them are residents or meet the residency requirement of Carlsbad. The purge is focusing on the applicants that meet the Residency Preference so when funds become available in the future, the waiting list will be current. Once we have gone through the waiting list and assisted those clients, then we will look at reopening the waiting list. Last night the President signed the bill for new funding for federal fiscal year 2009. This will be retroactive to October 1, 2008. We did receive information that there is 16.8 billion or 341 million above the federal fiscal year 2008, and 1.5 billion was allocated for administrative fees, which is an increase of $150 million above last federal fiscal year. From what we understand, it will take a couple of weeks before the funding information will trickle down to the individual housing agencies on how that will impact them and how much money they will receive. Commissioner Wrisley asked on the Violence Against Women Act, if the police run into the situation where there is violence against a woman or children, we don't have a safe house or anything do we? We just refer them to the Women's Resource Center, is that correct? HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 12,2009 PAGE 3 of 5 Ms. Nunn said right. That is exactly who we refer them to, the Women's Resource Center, because that is what they specialize in, women who have been victimized and are impacted by domestic violence. Commissioner Wrisley said she thinks it would be better if everything went through them. Ms. Nunn said right, it does go through them, but as far as a safe house, I am not aware of a safe house in Carlsbad. We do refer them to the Women's Resource Center. Commissioner Wrisley commented it would probably not be a good thing if everyone knew where they were. Chairperson Smith asked if we have a Section 8 recipient who is a victim of the VAWA, what happens to them. Do they have to leave their facilities and go to a safe house or how do they do that? Ms. Nunn said that is why the Act was instated. In the program regulations, there are actually grounds for termination of rental assistance benefits due to domestic violence. This Act protects the victim so they are not terminated if they can verify that the domestic violence was against them and they were a victim. That excludes them from any termination type act from the housing agency. Also, it is an important Act to owners that are participating in the Section 8 program because they cannot evict a .family as a result of domestic violence. Commissioner Kirk asked what were the specific performance characteristics that allowed us to be designated as a High Performing Housing Agency. Ms. Nunn answered it is based on data that we transmit to HUD. Under the Section 8 Management Assessment Program (SEMAP), there are 16 different indicators that we are ranked on. One of them is that all of our housing inspections are done prior to someone moving in and actually starting to receive assistance. Another one is the annual requirement to do housing inspections on each of the assisted units; it is based on our success rate of doing that and we don't have any that have been missed or have been late. Another is how accurately we determine a client's income and their rent portion. Also, it is our percentage of lease rate; it can either be the percentage of units we have leased, or the percentage of funding that we are utilizing. It is several factors they take into consideration as far as managing the program operations. Commissioner Kirk asked if that enhances our funding opportunity. Ms. Nunn answered no, but it does cut down on some of the administrative paperwork that we have to submit to HUD such as the PHA Plan. The PHA Plan is streamlined compared to another housing agency's requirement that is not considered a high performer. Also, in the future If there are funds that are available again for a competitive application. Right now we have been subsisting on funds that have replaced our current funds each year. There haven't been any new applications available that we can apply for to get additional funding. If in the future there was that opportunity, then yes, the fact that we are ranked as a High Performer would be taken into consideration and may give us extra points for that application process. That would probably be the only benefit other than it reflects that the housing agency is successfully operating the Section 8 program in accordance with the regulations and doing a good job. Commissioner Kirk said he has one more question about the general program information when you talked about current participant and the average monthly payment. Might that affect our ability to perform or what impact does that have on the program? Ms. Nunn said that it does have an impact. The housing agency receives a certain amount of funding each year to pay housing assistance payments. This means that the higher our housing assistance payments are, the fewer number of families will be assisted. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 12, 2009 PAGE 4 of 5 Commissioner Kirk asked if there will be any kind of projection or predictive measures that would say this has been the trend and we might have to reduce it by this amount in the coming year? Ms. Nunn asked as far as us as a housing agency looking at reducing our program size? Commissioner Kirk said based upon the change in the funding. Ms. Nunn said it has been a little difficult since it has been five months and we still haven't received our funding figures for federal fiscal year 2009. As a result, it has been very difficult to do projections and these projections are based on the allocation for 2008. We work closely with our finance department and every month we monitor how much money we have spent compared to how much money we have available. That 'is the information used to determine whether or not funding is available to pull more people from the waiting list or if we just have to let our program slowly reduce by attrition. Back in 2004 or 2003, because of funding reductions we actually had to make some drastic cuts. The funding reductions were retroactive and there was not enough money to cover the housing assistance payments that were committed. At that time, we had to make some policy changes and we reduced the amount of subsidy that we were providing each family. Commissioner Wrisley asked if we have a reserve for that. Ms. Nunn said right now we have a reserve and we are using it. That is what has kept us at the program level that we are at right now. We do have a healthy reserve, but the reserve will depend on how much money we are allocated for FFY 2009. However, we don't have ample reserve to cover our administrative costs. Depending on when we get our allocation and how much it is, we have exhausted any reserves that we have accrued for administrative deficits. In the past when that has happened, money that is in the housing trust fund for administrative costs has been used to help supplement the Section 8 Rental Assistance Program. Commissioner Wrisley asked if the Section 8 Program has had to do the 5% cut that the rest of the city departments have done or is your funding independent of that. Ms. Nunn said as part of a team, we have. Ms. Fountain might want to address that. Ms. Fountain said the Section 8 budget is part of our total department budget and we were asked as a department to look at ways that we could cut 5% if it looked like we needed that. Because we are not general fund funded, our department reducing doesn't really help the general fund. We did, however, cut the 5% but not in the Section 8 budget. Chairperson Smith asked Ms. Nunn if the 1,700 people who are waiting to get on the program, how long do you think it will take them to get on the program. Ms. Nunn said most likely some of them will never be assisted through our program because they do not meet the residency preference; either live or work in Carlsbad. They may not necessarily live here in Carlsbad, but they have to be able to show they work here. Of that 1,700, only approximately 300 meet our residency requirement. As long as our policy does not change, then most likely when we work through those 300 people that live or work in Carlsbad, we will look at opening up the waiting list to replenish the waiting list to ensure that there is a pool of applicants who live or work in Carlsbad. The applicants that are on our waiting list right now that are not residents, if they were ever to move to Carlsbad or start working in Carlsbad, they would receive the Residency Preference. This would then elevate their priority on the waiting list. Non-resident applicants have the opportunity to request that their application be sent to the jurisdiction in which they live or work. There is a good chance that a good portion of the non-resident applications already have applications in other jurisdictions. Ms. Fountain said she would like to add on to Ms. Nunn's comment. As we are seeing the housing assistance payment that we need to pay go up, really the only way we can pull people off the waiting list is either when somebody goes off the program for whatever reason or we get additional funding to help. As HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 12, 2009 PAGE 5 of 5 our housing assistance payment increases, we have to look at that closely because if it looks like that average monthly payment is going up to the point where we really can't pull anybody off the waiting list and just may need to assist the ones that we have at a higher amount. The amount of time it takes to come off the waiting list can really vary depending on a number of issues like that. Their preference or their residency status makes a big difference because it moves them up on the list, but still they could sit on that waiting list for quite a while if there is not any additional funding and no one is going off the program. When the economy is bad, you probably won't have people going off the program very soon. Most likely, unless there is a death or something like that or they violate the program and get removed from the program, but just voluntarily you probably won't see a lot of people going off the program and the housing assistance payment will increase. There is a chance that people will be on the waiting list for quite a while. Commissioner Wrisley commented that living in Carlsbad is expensive. Ms. Nunn said we see usually when people do relocate to Carlsbad it is because they relocated into one of the affordable housing developments. Hopefully they can maintain their rental status until they can get assistance which would give them a more of a financial relief. Our waiting list has been closed since October 1 , 2005. All applications we have on file were submitted prior to September 30, 2005. Chairperson Smith thanked Ms. Nunn for her presentation. Commissioner Kirk made a recommendation that the Housing Commission adopt Resolution 2009-002 recommending that the Housing and Redevelopment Commission approve the PHA Annual Plan for Fiscal Year 2009 for submission to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Commissioner Ritchie seconded the motion. VOTE: 4-0 AYES: Kirk, Ritchie, Smith and Wrisley NOES: None ABSTAIN: None ABSENT: Bradwell DIRECTOR'S REPORT Ms. Fountain said we do not have any other items on the agenda tonight. The Glen Ridge Grand Opening is next Thursday, March 19, 2009, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. ADJOURNMENT By proper motion, the meeting of March 12, 2009, was adjourned at 6:25 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Deborah Fountain Housing and Redevelopment Director PATRICIA CRESCENTI Minutes Clerk MINUTES ARE ALSO TAPED AND KEPT ON FILE UNTIL THE WRITTEN MINUTES ARE APPROVED.